[Open Letter] Call to help strengthen worldwide nuclear security by stopping plutonium separation
This letter, signed by civil society organizations around the world including PSPD, was released on March 25, 2016, in time for the Security Summit to be held in Washington DC on March 31-April 1.
To: Mr. Shinzo Abe
Prime Minister of Japan
March 25, 2016
Subject: Call to help strengthen worldwide nuclear security by stopping plutonium separation
We, the undersigned, call on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Government of Japan to make a strong contribution to the Nuclear Security Summit by announcing the indefinite postponement of the operation of the Rokkasho spent nuclear fuel reprocessing plant.
At the third Nuclear Security Summit held in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 2014 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Barak Obama announced their agreement to:
“remove and dispose of all highly-enriched uranium (HEU) and separated plutonium from the Fast Critical Assembly (FCA) at the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) in Japan.”
They declared that:
“this effort involves the elimination of hundreds of kilograms of nuclear material, furthering our mutual goal of minimizing stocks of HEU and separated plutonium worldwide, which will help prevent unauthorized actors, criminals, or terrorists from acquiring such materials.”
331 kilograms of plutonium from FCA are to be brought to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savanna River Site in South Carolina. According to the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), which operates the FCA, most of the plutonium (236 kg) is originally from the United Kingdom with 93 kg from the U.S. and the rest (2 kg) from France.
While asking the people of South Carolina to accept this material to protect the world from the possibility of theft from the JAEA’s lightly guarded Tokai-mura site, Japan is planning to begin to operate in 2018 its equally insecure Rokkasho Reprocessing plant, which is designed to separate annually up to 8,000 kilograms of plutonium from Japan’s spent nuclear fuel. The plant is currently the only reprocessing plant in a non-nuclear weapon state.
According to the US National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) Global Threat Reduction Initiative “Removal Program Overview” (December 3, 2014) the 331 kg of plutonium at FCA satisfies the program’s requirements for material to be sent to the United States for disposition, that:
“it must also pose a threat to national security, be susceptible to use in an improvised nuclear device, present a high risk of terrorist threat and have no other reasonable pathway to assure security from theft or diversion.”
While NNSA has been working hard to reduce this danger, it says threats still remain and calls for attention to the world-wide civilian separated plutonium problem emphasizing that:
“Global civilian plutonium inventories have risen sharply over the last 20 years” and that “Further international engagement is needed to stop plutonium accumulation and start drawing down inventories.”
After the 61st Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, “Nagasaki’s Voice: Remember Your Humanity” (1-5 November 2015, Nagasaki, Japan) the Pugwash Council, sharing the same concern, declared:
“Reprocessing to separate plutonium should end in all countries, including all nuclear weapon countries, whether for energy or weapon purposes…In view of the international security consequences of fuel cycle decisions, countries need to mutually agree to restrictions on their national sovereignty in making nuclear fuel cycle decisions.”
As of the end of 2014 Japan had 47,800 kilograms of separated plutonium: 10,800 kg in Japan, 20,700 kg in UK, and 16,300 kg in France. According to the International Panel on Fissile Material (IPFM) the amount of civilian separated plutonium worldwide as of the end of 2014 is about 270,000 kg. Three nuclear weapons states, France, the U.K., and Russia, and Japan account for most of this separated plutonium. The United States is faced with a difficulty trying to dispose of about 50,000 kg of surplus weapons plutonium. Further accumulation of nuclear-weapon-usable material is a concern for the international society and for Japan’s neighbors, who wonder why Japan is separating such huge quantities of directly weapon-useable material. Separated plutonium is a security risk. If other countries followed Japan’s example, it would increase proliferation risks. In fact, South Korea has been demanding that the United States acknowledge that the ROK has the same right as Japan to separate plutonium.
When Prime Minister Abe and President Obama announced the plan to transfer 331kg of plutonium to the U.S., they went on to:
“encourage others to consider what they can do to further HEU and plutonium minimization.”
At that time, in March 2014, operations at the Rokkasho reprocessing plant were to begin just around the time of the coming Nuclear Security Summit. This would have been a very ironic timing. The date subsequently was postponed to 2018, due to the inability of the plant’s operator to satisfy the new safety rules set by the Nuclear Regulation Authority created after the Fukushima accident. Some might be secretly hoping that this might effectively lower the profile of Japan’s plutonium separation program at a time when Japan’s Government hopes that the U.S. will agree to automatically extend, in 2018, their Agreement of Cooperation on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, which includes the U.S. acceptance of Japan’s right to separate plutonium from spent fuel irradiated in U.S. designed nuclear power plants.
We call on Japan to announce, at the Nuclear Security Summit to be held in Washington DC. March 31-April 1 2016, an indefinite postponement of its plan to start the Rokkasho reprocessing plant in order to further the mutual goal of Japan and the U.S. to minimize global stocks of separated plutonium. That would be a great contribution to the worldwide effort to strengthen nuclear security.
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